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    Write in Another Language: 10 Easy Steps: Write in 10 Easy Steps, #2
    Write in Another Language: 10 Easy Steps: Write in 10 Easy Steps, #2
    Write in Another Language: 10 Easy Steps: Write in 10 Easy Steps, #2
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Write in Another Language: 10 Easy Steps: Write in 10 Easy Steps, #2

    By Helena Halme

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    About this ebook

    Would you like to write in another language? Here is a handy guide to get you started!

     

    Knowing different languages enriches your life and through that your writing. I took the decision early on in my career to write in English, even though it's my third language after Finnish and Swedish.

     

    In this book, I share with you a few practical tips to make it easier to write in another language. I also discuss topics such as how language affects our behavior and reveal techniques I have found useful when writing in another language. Four other authors who write successfully in a second language also share their knowledge and methods.

     

    "Helena's experience and tips are excellent. She covers foreign language, language itself, and even writing as a whole. I highly recommend this book to anyone hoping to express themselves in a second language."– Amy McCracken, Editor, Designer, and Author.

     

    Get this easy guide to writing in another language today!

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHelena Halme
    Release dateAug 27, 2019
    ISBN9780995749535
    Write in Another Language: 10 Easy Steps: Write in 10 Easy Steps, #2
    Author

    Helena Halme

    Helena Halme grew up in Tampere, central Finland, and moved to the UK at the age of 22 via Stockholm and Helsinki. She spent the first ten years in Britain being a Navy Wife and working as journalist and translator for the BBC. Helena now lives in North London, loves Nordic Noir and writes Scandinavian and military fiction. Her latest novel, The Navy Wife, is a sequel to her best-selling novel, The Englishman. Helena has published two other novels, Coffee and Vodka, and The Red King of Helsinki.

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      Book preview

      Write in Another Language - Helena Halme

      Write in Another Language

      WRITE IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

      TEN EASY STEPS

      HELENA HALME

      Newhurst Press

      COPYRIGHT

      Write in Another Language © 2019 Helena Halme Published worldwide 2019 by Newhurst Press All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      e-ISBN: 978-0-9957495-3-5

      ISBN: 978-0-9957495-4-2

      Visit www.helenahalme.com for more books by the same author and for news and reviews of Helena’s work.

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      1. What is Language?

      2. Language Prejudice

      3. You Are Unique

      4. Reading

      5. Check, Check, and Recheck

      6. Online Tools

      7. First Readers

      8. Experts and Research

      9. Editing and Proofreading

      10. Developing Your Writing Skills

      Writers Who Write in Another Language

      Over to You!

      Write Your Story

      A free story

      Also by Helena Halme

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      INTRODUCTION

      Why Do I Write in English?

      When I tell people I’m a writer, the first thing they ask me apart from what I write (Nordic contemporary fiction) is what language I use. Apart from my thesis, which I wrote in Swedish, I’ve written all of my eleven books in English. When I tell them this, the next query inevitably is: Why not Finnish or Swedish?

      English is one of the most widely spoken, and certainly read, languages in the world, so it makes sense to write in English. But there are other reasons why I choose to use what technically amounts to my third language.

      My mother tongue is Finnish, a language spoken by just 5 million people. It’s said to be one of the most difficult languages to learn, along with Mandarin, Arabic, and Japanese.

      Because of its difficulty, and the small number of people who speak it, most Finns learn another language early on in their lives. They go on to learn at least one more language, and sometimes are fluent in many.

      A perfect example of Finnish multilingualism was recently given by Finland’s former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, now MEP (Member of the European Parliament). When stepping out of his car in Brussels, he was interviewed by three different news reporters, in three of the five languages he speaks. Without hesitation, he turned from one to the other, switching from German to French to English without a single umm or ahh.

      My language skills aren’t quite this impressive. I speak only three languages. I started studying English at my school in Tampere, a town in central Finland, at the age of seven. When I was eleven, my family moved to Stockholm and I became fluent in Swedish.

      I don’t remember the moment when I began to understand the Swedish-speaking pupils around me, but I vividly recall the first day at my new school in Stockholm. It was late August and hot underneath the plastic canopy that connected four brightly colored buildings, when my mother handed me over to the care of a diminutive, nervous woman.

      It turned out that my new teacher had reason to be jumpy; during my very first lesson at my new school I witnessed something that shocked me to the core. The teacher, whom I later found to be a kindhearted, timid woman, was bullied by 20 or so rowdy pre-teens. During that lesson, she had to duck to avoid a ruler thrown by a particularly nasty long-haired boy sitting at the back of the class. I also saw another boy kick my new teacher, while she—without success—tried to bring the class to heel.

      In Finland, school was rather different. Good behavior was drummed into pupils from an early age, and I couldn’t escape its shackles. That classroom was never quiet and I was glad to escape to my daily language lessons with a Finnish teacher who was the opposite of my class teacher. Large, loud, and full of stories about her ailments, from sinusitis to indigestion, she provided me with the key to my scary new world—Swedish.

      My next memory after that first, unsettling day was of making friends with a fellow (well-behaved) pupil called Anna. Suddenly I was able to converse with my new friend without difficulty, and I could understand the praise showered on me by my new teacher. I think I must have been naturally talented at languages, too, because after just a few months nobody could tell that I hadn’t been born in Stockholm.

      I’ve been told by my mother and sister that we used to practice the strange, Swedish, pronunciation at home, to ensure that no one would know we were from Finland (the discrimination against Finns in Sweden was legendary in those days, but that’s another story). However, I have no memory of these practice sessions. When we moved back to Finland four years later, I had to relearn my mother tongue. All through this period, I was also learning English.

      After taking my Baccalaureate in a Finnish school in Helsinki, I studied economics at a Swedish language university in Finland. After graduation, at the tender age of 22, I moved to Britain. Almost as soon as I arrived, I began writing a diary. At first, I wrote in Finnish, but when it became difficult to describe what was happening around me in my mother tongue, I turned the notebook over and began writing in English.

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